2025-2027 EAC Spotlight: Briana Morales
This fall, Advance Illinois welcomed the 2025-2027 Educator Advisory Council (EAC) cohort, bringing together educators across early childhood to postsecondary, representing the diversity across Illinois. In the next two years, they will deepen their policy knowledge, explore the root causes of the disparities we see in education, and take action together through advocacy efforts including legislative testimony, writing op-eds, and organizing their peers. As part of the 2025-2027 EAC Cohort Spotlight series, we look forward to introducing each member and highlighting their journeys as educators and the experiences they bring to this space.
Introducing: Briana Morales, English Teacher
Tell us a little about your teaching journey — what subjects, grades, or communities have you served?
I’ve been in education for nine years, and all but one of those have been spent teaching high school English in alternative education in East St. Louis School District 189.
I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was young. In seventh grade, during one of the most fragile seasons of my life, my English teacher introduced me to poetry. She was quietly battling breast cancer at the time, yet she showed up every day with gentleness, honesty, and an unwavering belief in her students. Through writing, we both found something healing. Words became a refuge. Relationship became restoration. That experience did more than help me love literature — it quite literally changed the trajectory of my life.
Today, I try to offer my students that same kind of space.
Teaching in alternative education has shaped me profoundly. My students are brilliant, complex, and often navigating systems that have labeled them by their worst mistake. My work centers on healing-centered literacy practices — using reading and writing not just as academic tools, but as vehicles for identity development, critical thinking, and restoration. I believe deeply that each of us is worth more than the worst thing we have ever done, and that one caring, consistent relationship can help a young person turn the page to the rest of their life.
In 2023, I was honored to serve as the Illinois Teacher of the Year, which allowed me to travel across the state and engage in more than 100 speaking engagements with educators, school leaders, and policymakers. In those conversations, I shared what I have learned from my students in East St. Louis — that rigor and love are not opposites, that accountability must be paired with humanity, and that literacy can be a pathway to both academic growth and personal healing.
My journey has always been rooted in relationships. And it continues to be guided by the belief that when young people are seen, challenged, and cared for deeply, they can author entirely new futures.
What are some challenges or opportunities you see in education today that motivate your work?
What continues to motivate my work is the tension I see every day between possibility and inequity.
We are living in a moment where young people are brilliant, informed, creative, and deeply aware of the world around them — yet too many of our systems are still structured in ways that limit their access to opportunity. Persistent funding disparities, overreliance on narrow accountability metrics, and the disproportionate disciplining of Black and Brown students are not abstract policy issues to me — they show up in real classrooms, in real student stories, every day.
At the same time, I see extraordinary opportunity.
I see students who are eager to lead, question, and co-construct learning experiences that reflect their identities and communities. I see educators across Illinois pushing for culturally responsive teaching, holistic accountability systems, and policies that center student voice. I see growing conversations about mental health, belonging, and the importance of building schools that nurture the whole child — not just test scores.
Those dual realities — inequity and possibility — are what drive me.
My work is motivated by the belief that educational systems can be redesigned to affirm students’ identities, expand access to rigorous and joyful learning, and ensure that zip code, race, or circumstance never determine a child’s future. Being part of statewide conversations allows me to bring classroom-grounded insight into policy spaces — and to advocate for solutions that are both visionary and practical.
There is hard work ahead. But there is also tremendous potential. And that’s what keeps me committed.
How does being part of the EAC connect to your goals or passions as an educator?
Being part of the Educator Advisory Council connects directly to both my purpose and my practice.
At my core, I am committed to ensuring that students — particularly those in historically under-resourced communities — experience schools as places of possibility, dignity, and intellectual challenge. In my daily work as a high school English teacher in an alternative setting, I see how policy decisions shape everything from staffing to curriculum to the metrics by which students are judged. The EAC creates a bridge between those lived classroom realities and statewide decision-making.
That connection matters deeply to me.
Too often, education policy is developed at a distance from the communities most impacted by it. The EAC provides an opportunity to bring forward the voices of students, families, and educators who navigate the complexities of our system every day. It allows me to advocate for accountability systems that are holistic, for funding models that are equitable, and for policies that recognize student brilliance rather than deficit.
It also aligns with my broader passion for educator leadership. I believe teachers should not only implement policy — we should help shape it. Being part of the EAC affirms that educators are experts in their own right and that our insights are essential to building a stronger, more just educational landscape in Illinois.
Ultimately, this work reflects my belief that meaningful change happens when classroom experience and policy vision are in conversation with one another. The EAC allows me to stand in that intersection — and that is exactly where I want to be.
Can you share an example of a time you advocated for your students, school, or community?
When Illinois adopted the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading (CRTL) Standards, it was an important step forward. Beginning in 2025, teacher preparation programs would be required to include coursework aligned to those standards. But I immediately saw a critical gap: the policy focused on future teachers, while tens of thousands of in-service educators — the ones standing in front of students every day — were not guaranteed access to that same learning.
If we are serious about equity, we cannot wait for change to happen slowly through new cohorts of teacher candidates. Students needed culturally responsive classrooms now.
Through my work as a policy fellow with Teach Plus Illinois, I convened and led a working group of educators to advocate for dedicated state funding to support professional learning around CRTL for in-service teachers. Together, our team of teachers successfully championed $600,000 in state funding to make this possible.
We were intentional about the design. We knew this kind of growth does not happen best in isolation or through a one-day workshop. It happens in community. It happens when educators who are already doing this work can share their expertise alongside colleagues who are ready to begin but need support and inspiration. We envisioned professional learning communities grounded in inquiry, reflection, and action — spaces where teachers could examine their own contexts, develop culturally responsive practices aligned to real student needs, and learn from one another across districts and regions.
Our advocacy ultimately led to a partnership between the University of Illinois and the Illinois State Board of Education to offer statewide professional development aligned to the CRTL standards, along with a microcredential pathway for educators committed to deepening their practice.
For me, this work was always about my students. It was about ensuring that affirming, humanizing pedagogy is not dependent on chance — on whether a student happens to be assigned to one particular teacher — but is supported and scaled across systems. It was about recognizing that the educators already in classrooms deserve structured opportunities to grow, reflect, and lead this work together.
What advice would you give students to help them stay inspired?
You have gifts the world needs. There is something in you — your voice, your imagination, your way of seeing problems, your way of loving people, your humor, your fire — that no one else can replicate. The world is not waiting for a copy of someone else. It is waiting for you. Give the best of yourself away to others and watch the way the world is transformed.
Learn more about the Educator Advisory Council here.